It is known to provide for data communications between and amongst multi-media devices, which are installed, for example, in a residential or commercial building, by means of a communications network. The multi-media devices might, for example, be Network Attached Storage (NAS), a Home Gateway (HGW), a Personal Computer (PC), and a Set-Top Box (STB). Communication between and amongst such multi-media devices is by means of a medium interface circuit at each multi-media devices (or node) with the medium interface circuits being operative to communicate data from node to node over an appropriate medium. The medium interface circuit may be operative to transmit and receive data over one or more of powerlines, telephone lines and coaxial cables.
Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) communications are in widespread use in residential and commercial environments. For example, a WiFi communications link may be established between a multi-media network and a laptop. Invariably there is some form of security built into a WiFi link. For example, in the 802.11 WiFi standard a particular wireless Local Area Network (LAN) is identified by a unique Service Set Identifier (SSID) with communication of data packets between and amongst LAN nodes requiring use of an SSID unique to the LAN. Furthermore, every LAN node sharing the same SSID may be configured to require a password for encryption to thereby secure data integrity and confidentiality from unauthorised access. It will be appreciated that the security of WiFi links is important given the greater accessibility to other parties that WiFi affords compared with more inherently secure copper or fibre optic links.
When a WiFi access point or router is being configured in a network, the normal approach is to connect a computer to the WiFi access point or router by means of an Ethernet cable and to configure the WiFi access point or router by way of a web-page interface or wizard running on the computer. Alternatively and where wireless communications with the WiFi access point or router is open, a wireless connection may be established between the computer and the WiFi access point or router instead of relying on an Ethernet cable connection. Each further wireless enabled node in the network may be configured in the same fashion. Alternatively, each further network node may be configured by downloading configuration data from a USB device. Another approach that is employed in a suitably configured network is user actuation of a pairing push button of each of an already configured node and a node to be configured to initiate the transfer of the configuration data to the node to be configured with the process being repeated for each of the further nodes.